The use of electronic mail (email) has led to significant gains in productivity. As the amount of email traffic continues to increase, however, email can become a drag on productivity. This is particularly true in large organizations with multiple locations. Users often receive a significant number of emails each day that are of either little or no relevance to the user. The more time the user spends managing these emails, the less time that is available for doing actual work.
Efforts to reduce the number of emails a user receives have largely focused on unwanted emails referred to as “junk email” or “spam” (hereafter collectively “junk email”). Junk email typically is identified by the email service provider or the user's email client. Emails are processed using techniques such as content analysis, source filtering, or the like to label an email as “junk.” The junk email then can be deleted or delivered to a particular email folder, for example.
Still, the amount of “legitimate” emails, i.e., emails not considered “junk email,” received by users can be overwhelming and significantly reduce productivity.